Major-Smith, Daniel;
Chaudhary, Nikhil;
Dyble, Mark;
Major-Smith, Katie;
Page, Abigail E;
Salali, Gul Deniz;
Mace, Ruth;
(2023)
Cooperation and partner choice among Agta hunter-gatherer children: An evolutionary developmental perspective.
PLoS One
, 18
(4)
, Article e0284360. 10.1371/journal.pone.0284360.
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Abstract
Examining development is essential for a full understanding of behaviour, including how individuals acquire traits and how adaptive evolutionary forces shape these processes. The present study explores the development of cooperative behaviour among the Agta, a Filipino hunter-gatherer population. A simple resource allocation game assessing both levels of cooperation (how much children shared) and patterns of partner choice (who they shared with) was played with 179 children between the ages of 3 and 18. Children were given five resources (candies) and for each was asked whether to keep it for themselves or share with someone else, and if so, who this was. Between-camp variation in children's cooperative behaviour was substantial, and the only strong predictor of children's cooperation was the average level of cooperation among adults in camp; that is, children were more cooperative in camps where adults were more cooperative. Neither age, sex, relatedness or parental levels of cooperation were strongly associated with the amount children shared. Children preferentially shared with close kin (especially siblings), although older children increasingly shared with less-related individuals. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding cross-cultural patterns of children's cooperation, and broader links with human cooperative childcare and life history evolution.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Cooperation and partner choice among Agta hunter-gatherer children: An evolutionary developmental perspective |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0284360 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284360 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 Major-Smith et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Children, Decision making, Games, Evolutionary development, Foraging, Culture, Learning, Social Systems |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10169277 |
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